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Discovery Kids
Discovery Kids 'was an American digital cable and satellite television channel owned by Discovery Communications featuring science, nature, and adventure-themed programs aimed towards children aged between 6 and 11. In April 2009, Hasbro announced a joint venture with Discovery to re-launch Discovery Kids as The Hub (later Hub Network) on October 11, 2010. History Discovery Communications launched Discovery Kids in October 7, 1996, as part of a suite of four new digital cable channels that included Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Civilization, and Science Channel. Upon its launch, the network primarily offered adventure, nature, and science-themed programs aimed towards a children's audience between ages 6 and 11. Marjorie Kaplan, the network's senior vice president, explained that the creation of Discovery Kids was influenced primarily by kids who were watching its parent network's programming together with their parents. From 1996 until 2000, Discovery Kids was carried by only a select few cable television providers. By late-2001, the channel was carried in at least 15 million homes. In September 2001, a Canadian version of Discovery Kids was launched in partnership with Corus Entertainment, which was later replaced by the Canadian version of Nickelodeon on November 2, 2009. In December 2001, Discovery Kids announced a partnership with NBC, in which it would produce a new Saturday morning block for the network known as ''Discovery Kids on NBC, beginning in September 2002. The block, which replaced a teen-oriented block consisting only of sitcoms, featured programming that met the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) educational programming guidelines, including new original series (such as the reality television series Endurance), existing Discovery Kids programming, along with children's spin-offs of programs from sister networks such as Animal Planetand Discovery Channel. With the launch of the new block, Discovery Kids also branched out into animated programming with the premieres of Kenny the Shark and Tutenstein. In March 2006, Discovery declined to renew its contract with NBC for its Saturday morning block, citing a desire to focus exclusively on the Discovery Kids cable channel. Since the launch of the NBC block, Discovery Kids had grown its cable carriage to over 43 million homes. NBC would replace the Discovery Kids block with Qubo in September 2006. 'Relaunch as Hub Network ' On April 30, 2009, toy manufacturer and media company Hasbro announced that it would be forming ajoint venture with Discovery Communications to re-launch Discovery Kids as a new, family-oriented television channel. Under the arrangement, Discovery would be in charge of handling advertising sales and distribution for the new channel, while Hasbro would be involved in acquiring and producing programming. While the network planned to maintain educational series (including those carried over from Discovery Kids), plans called for new original programs based off Hasbro-owned franchises such as G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, Transformers, and game shows adapted from its board game brands. In January 2010, Discovery and Hasbro announced that the new network would be known as '''The Hub; two months later, the companies announced that The Hub would be launched on October 10, 2010. The network planned to continue targeting Discovery Kids' main demographic of children aged 2 through 14 (a market which staff felt was being abandoned by its competitors, such as Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, in favor of tweens), but also planned to feature a primetime block with family-oriented programming. Veteran television executive, and the network's president and chief executive officer Margaret Loesch stated that The Hub's goal was to be "vibrant" and "diverse" in its programming, and that the channel would not purely be a marketing vehicle for Hasbro products. The network's original imaging was developed by Troika Design Group, and built around an emblem nicknamed the "hubble"—which was designed to embody a "catalyst of action and imagination". The final logo design was the result of a number of drafts by Troika designers, some of which had incorporated typography similar to Hasbro's logo. The Hub was launched on Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. ET; its first program was an episode of The Twisted Whiskers Show. Some of The Hub's launch programming would include the game show Family Game Night, animated series Pound Puppies, My Little Pony—a reboot of the franchise led by Lauren Faust, and Transformers: Prime, reruns of the Jim Henson series Fraggle Rock, and the preschool-oriented programs Cosmic Quantum Ray and The WotWots. Category:Channels